Dutch quality

From its single factory at Tiel, in the Netherlands, Itho Daalderop produces between 8000 to 12,000 products per week, ranging from complex heat pumps to simple covers for ventilation units. It has been in business since 1880, and around half of Dutch homes now have one of their products installed. As a Dutch manufacturer, competing against cheap imports from the Far East, it works hard to keep costs low and competes by offering high quality products.

Innovative attitude

Key to its success is a forward-thinking attitude to innovation. This starts in the board room and filters down to factory floor. An example of this is the way in which Itho Daalderop has servitised part of its business model; whereby it remains the product owner and offers the product as part of a service to the end-user. This adds impetus to guaranteeing the high quality of products throughout their lifetime. In a similar way, the management have been quick to see the benefits of Smart Manufacturing and how this can be adopted using innius. You can read more about the management decision to adopt innius, and how this supports other innovative projects.

Retrofitting IIoT

The factory’s rich history means that it contains a mix of new and older machinery. Like many industrial machine users, it appeared to Itho Daalderop that connecting old machines up to the IIoT would be a difficult and costly challenge. But by using innius and an eWON Flexy modem, this has been very simple and cost effective. As Kerst Algera, Director of Operations explains, “We’ve been able to take an existing factory and bring it to the manufacturing 4.0 level. Because connecting old machines, is not possible in many other solutions, but with innius this has become possible.”

Immediate Results

“We immediately see results”, says Albert van Loon, Production Technology Manager. He continues, “we can analyse what the efficiency of the equipment is. You can see that among the production equipment there are sometimes stagnations, due to parts not being delivered, and we also see that some products are more complex to manufacture than we previously thought. The production line has a takt of 45 seconds, but we have several products above 45 seconds, which means the cost price goes up, and the numbers we have forecasted, can’t be achieved. So, by using the innius app, you can analyse that, without having to put a person next to the production line to do a time study to analyse how to speed up production.”

Production Manager, Richard van Gelder adds, “The data allows me to see how my process is running, how the steps are going, what the working times are, what the Mean Time To Repair might be and thus where bottlenecks, potential improvements are, and for the Maintenance Engineers, the reliability can be monitored. They see, that a machine is going to break, so we’re going to plan some preventative maintenance. And I want planned maintenance, not ad hoc stoppages; because then my delivery reliability becomes insecure.”

Working with innius

Their experience of working together with innius has also been very positive. Control Engineer, Gerard van Gelderen, says, “The collaboration with innius has gone very well, the lads, after contact via phone or email, were always prepared to help.”

Richard van Gelder was similarly impressed, “I have had several meetings with innius, before we started the implementation – and I have experienced innius as a professional team, who gives clear direction, and don’t want to be held up or put off, they want to progress and thereby demonstrating their decisiveness. I think that’s a compliment for innius. That’s what we need as a partner.”